1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image capture device and more particularly relates to an image capture device with electronic zoom capability.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-305678 discloses an electronic camera. That electronic camera can do “electronic zooming”, which is a kind of image magnification process for zooming in on a part of the image data that has been captured with a CCD. That is to say, the electronic zooming is a process for magnifying only a portion of the given image according to the zoom power specified. That is why the higher the zoom power, the lower the quality of the image magnified.
The electronic camera disclosed in that patent document determines whether or not the number of pixels of that part of the image data to be subjected to the electronic zooming is equal to or smaller than that of pixels of the image to be written on a memory card. If the answer is YES, then the electronic camera instructs a display device in the viewfinder to post an alert.
Then, the user can know in advance that such a poor looking image that has been obtained by that electronic zooming is going to be written on the memory card and can prevent the camera from doing that if he or she doesn't like such an image.
The electronic camera disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-305678 can certainly prevent such an image with debased image quality, which is often the case with electronic zooming, from being recorded but does not provide any technique for capturing a great looking image even if the user has specified a high zoom power for electronic zooming.